Regulating the Unconscious: Against the Destruction of Psychoanalysis by the Medical Fascists.

This article is a critique against the recent proposal by UK MP Dawn Butler to regulate psychoanalysis and psychotherapy under the guise of protecting people. Drawing on the psychoanalytic framework of Jacques Lacan and the dialogical theology of Franz Rosenzweig, I will explore how regulation (of the talking therapies, especially psychoanalysis) risks silencing the unconscious and reducing “therapy” (or consensual mutual dialogue within a psychoanalytic context) to moral instruction. I argue that many therapists today have adopted a bureaucratic and ideological model that betrays the radical potential of the talking cure envisaged by Sigmund Freud. Instead of creating safety, overregulation threatens to suppress speech, constrain transformation, and eliminate the psychoanalytic space as a site of political and existential freedom.

The Crisis of Speech in the Clinic

In a political climate increasingly dominated by moral certainty and cultural policing, it is perhaps unsurprising that the psycho-therapeutic and psychoanalytic space has become a battleground. Recently, UK Member of Parliament Dawn Butler proposed tighter regulation of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, ostensibly to protect clients from harm. Yet what appears to be a progressive concern for safety risks becoming a deeply regressive attack on one of the last remaining spaces of radical speech: the analytic encounter.

Psychoanalysis, drawing on the tradition of Jacques Lacan and the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, offers a profound challenge to the regulatory impulse. It refuses to reduce the subject to identity labels or moral scripts. It recognizes that truth is not always soothing, and that healing comes not from validation, but from the confrontation with unconscious desire. This article critiques the current trend toward ideological regulation in psychotherapy and exposes how many therapists are complicit in the devaluation of the talking cure itself.

Dawn Butler's Proposal: Regulating from Above

Dawn Butler’s call to regulate psychoanalysis appears to stem from genuine concern: that vulnerable patients may be harmed by outdated or oppressive views expressed in the consulting room. But the framing of this concern often conflates disagreement or discomfort with harm; the implication is that therapists who do not affirm prevailing political ideologies around gender, race, or identity are dangerous.

This conflation turns psychoanalysis into a moral enterprise rather than an analytic one. It demands that the analyst comply with the ideological norms of the day, often defined by activist discourse or governmental policy. In doing so, it misrepresents the function of the clinic. As Lacan wrote in Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), where he presents the analyst’s desire not as a benevolent urge to heal or guide, but as a structural intervention: 

“The analyst’s desire is not a pure desire. It is a desire to obtain absolute difference…” (Seminar XI, p. 276)

In other words, It is a desire to let the unconscious speak—not to impose a script.

Lacan: Desire, Alienation, and the Ethics of Speech

Therefore, Lacanian psychoanalysis is not about healing in the conventional sense. It is a return to Freud that emphasises the importance of language, desire, and how the split subject (due to being alienated/distanced from language or signifiers. The unconscious, for Lacan, is structured like a language. The subject is not whole; it is formed in and through the Other’s language, law, and desire.

Psychoanalysis, then, is not a space for moral correction or social affirmation. It is a space for speech—including contradictory, painful, or politically incorrect speech. Regulation that demands ideological conformity undermines this by introducing a censor into the very structure of the analytic encounter. The analyst can no longer listen freely; the analysand can no longer speak freely.

Rosenzweig: God Speaks, Not as Doctrine but as Address

Franz Rosenzweig, in The Star of Redemption, offers a theological vision that complements Lacan's psychoanalytic one. For Rosenzweig, revelation is not a body of knowledge but an event: the moment when God addresses the subject as "Thou." God does not offer a fixed identity or ideology, but a call into relationship. The divine name, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (“I will be what I will be”), is not a statement of being, but of becoming.

Rosenzweig’s insight into dialogical revelation mirrors the analyst’s task: to listen not for correctness, but for what exceeds mastery. Like the divine call, the speech in analysis disrupts identity. It invites transformation, not affirmation. Butler’s regulatory model, by contrast, wants to pre-empt the event of speech by inscribing what is acceptable beforehand.

The Rise of the Fake-Woke Therapist

Many therapists today, far from resisting this politicization, actively embrace it. The therapeutic field is increasingly populated by practitioners who offer not analysis, but ideological support: affirming identities, reinforcing social narratives, and avoiding difficult or uncomfortable truths. These are the "fake-woke" therapists—not because they are insincere, but because they mistake politics for ethics.

In this model:

· Therapy becomes coaching.

· Suffering becomes pathology only when it contradicts identity.

· Language is policed for offense, not listened to for meaning.

This shift devalues the analytic space. It prioritizes safety over truth, affirmation over transformation, and self-esteem over desire. The result is not less harm, but a form of symbolic violence: the foreclosure of the unconscious.

Regulating the Sacred: What is at Stake?

What is truly at stake in the call for regulation is the future of the analytic clinic itself. Psychoanalysis is already a marginal practice in many mental health care systems. To subject it to ideological regulation is to eliminate its core feature: its radical openness to the unconscious and its subversive nature (e.g., of state dictates/narratives).

Lacan insisted that the analyst is not authorized by the state, the university, or any external body, but only by their own analysis. This does not mean analysis is unaccountable, but that it cannot be reduced to external authority. Likewise, Rosenzweig’s subject is not saved by doctrine, but by responding to the divine call. Regulation replaces this call with code.

Conclusion: In Defence of Psychoanalysis

To defend psychoanalysis against regulation is not to defend abuse, incompetence, or dogmatism. It is to insist that the clinic must remain a space where speech is free, where truth is messy, and where healing comes through confrontation, not conformity.

In a time when therapy is rapidly being transformed into a zone of ideological and social training, we must remember what psychoanalysis is: a sacred space for truth-telling, where the soul can stammer, stutter, contradict, and desire—without fear of being corrected into submission.

However, we must recall the last few years of COVID medical fascism that was unleashed upon the public and supported by the likes of Dawn Butler and many others around the world. For example, locking down healthy people whilst they (the politicians and scientists) continued to live life as though there was no health emergency (e.g., Neil Fergusson SAGE science advisor, out having sex with his mistress during lockdown, Boris Johnson and party gate, Keir Starmer beer and pizzas, Nicola Sturgeon roaming the land maskless whilst masking the children for 8 hours a day, and her Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood breaking lockdown rules-I could go on). Then there was the violent coercion (e.g., vaccine mandates, health passes, etc) to take an emergency authorised COVID-19 shot. And let us not forget the use of unethical and illegal applied psychology used by the UK government to “nudge” people to comply with medical fascism. This legacy of medical fascism really does highlight that people like Dawn Butler have no moral high ground when it comes to advocating for safety. Her and others’ CV stink. I think it is safe to say, we can take their “health and safety” advice with a pinch of salt, and with great comfort, ignore it.

Some Sources of Reference:

· Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Norton.

· Rosenzweig, F. (2005). The Star of Redemption. University of Wisconsin Press.

· Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Pantheon.

Also, my articles on the applied illegal and unethical psychology by the UK government: Dr Bruce Scott | UKColumn https://www.ukcolumn.org/writer/dr-bruce-scott

And for evidence of medical fascism, this Substack by BiologyPhenom is a must read. https://substack.com/@scottishcovidinquiry

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